Modular Progress
Hi everyone,
I decided to forgo getting RC3 working so as to make some more headway
on the modular packages. I actually managed to get the server fully running
with more or less what's in the archive. I had to do some stuff by hand to
get it to run, including set up symlinks normally set up by the *-common
packages. A big problem turned out to be the fonts.dir, which wasn't
getting built because mkfontdir isn't being built properly on my system.
That'll be the next task to debug. Copying and modifying the built version
of the script from my experimental install worked fine though, and once
this utility is in place the fonts build and install properly, allowing the
server to run.
I'd love to have other people start hacking on the modular packages with
me. Anyone who wants to work on this, you'll *need* a chroot at this point
(unless you like breaking your system like I did :-) and I can provide
instructions to the list if anyone asks when I'm a little less tired.
So here's a quick sketch of what I'm thinking will be the next few
steps...
1) Get internal X.org utilities like mkfontdir building and working
properly. We don't have to organize these in to their proper packages
just yet, but it might be a good idea to at least start.
2) Get the -common packages working. Daniel and I have discussed
trimmming them down to just xorg-common, and I have to investigate if
this is really feasible and worthwhile. Either way, we need to get
the packages that set up the symlinks working and building.
3) The above seem to be the critical steps that I'm aware of right now
to get the full working server install building from our repo and
running in a chroot. Step 3 is to get any of the things I'm not aware
of in order to acieve this goal :-)
4) Finish packaging the drivers. This should be trivial. If anyone wants
to package the ones they need to test the server on their systems,
please go for it! If you have any questions about how I've done
things so far, *please* ask.
5) Package the apps. This involves deciding on the organization and
layout of the packages. Daniel has done a lot of this work already,
so we should look over what's in Ubuntu. As I understand it, Eugene
has also been thinking in this direction.
6) Package any remaining data or other miscellaneous items we have lying
around.
7) By this point we should be able to do a full, working install of the
X Window System. Make sure this is true, more or less.
8) Get smooth upgrades working from both unstable and sarge. We can
steal liberally from the monolithic packages for this, since many of
the problems are already solved there. This should also include use
of piuparts to do automated checking of our work for us. Once this is
done, we should be ready to upload to unstable, but I'll be planning
on being flexible on the actual upload to unstable depending on where
we are.
9) Port our patches from the monolith to the modular tree
10) Q&A for etch. This includes a lot of the work from #8, but it also
includes extensive testing. Most of this should be done in
conjunction with the users of unstable and testing. I expect the vast
majority of the Q&A we do to be in this portion, rather than in #8.
I'll be putting this list in the modular branch in the TODO file.
Comments are appreciated and I'm hoping that we edit this and fill it out
in more detail as we go along.
I know things have quieted down and the excitement of just getting Xorg
in to the archive has faded, but we're moving in to a whole new world with
modular, and the benefits will be huge in terms of the kind of work we can
do. This will seriously open up our ability to do actual development on the
X tree if we want, rather than simple maintainership. I, for one, intend
to take advantage of that, since we all know that development is usually
more fun than fixing bugs :-) But if we want to ship modular with etch,
we've got to get these packages not only running, but polished to a quality
we can be proud to call Debian.
- David Nusinow
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